Simulation of Iranian total mixed diets and their analysis for essential and toxic trace elements using nuclear and complementary analytical techniques

Neutron activation analysis, inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry(ICP-ES) and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) have been used to determineactual daily dietary intakes of minerals and trace elements in the Iranianpopulation. This article deals with the trace elemental analysis of dailydiets of the Iranian population differentiated with respect to food habits,geographical variability, literacy and income. Three study groups in fiveregions were defined. Thirty total daily diet samples were prepared basedon the method of dietary records. Also a few samples representing the intakesof two other study groups, males and females, were prepared by the duplicatediet method. Therefore, this study not only covered representative dietarypatterns of almost all adult people in Iran in a pilot study, but it alsopermitted to check the validity of the sampling methodology for total mixeddiet simulation.